


Not Less Weary Days

by xaara



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: American Civil War, Crack Treated Seriously, Gen, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-16
Updated: 2015-03-16
Packaged: 2018-03-18 04:04:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3555386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xaara/pseuds/xaara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint Barton is blasted back in time to the American Civil War, where he meets Clara Barton, a distant relative. He handles it remarkably well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Less Weary Days

**Author's Note:**

> During a rather dull training, I was playing with the idea of a Marvel Civil War/American Civil War crossover. Then it occurred to me that Clara Barton is absolutely Clint Barton’s great-great-great aunt. This is not actually mentioned in this fic, but you should know anyway. Then I came home and wrote an accidental (sort of crack? but also weirdly serious?) ficlet. I do not regret my life choices.
> 
>  **Warning** : Some Civil-War-appropriate battle wounds, not described in great detail.

There’s no time for Clint to do anything but shield his face from the weapon’s blast. He feels it wash over him, staggers on a Manhattan corner, and rights himself in a field. He’s disoriented: the smells of gunpowder and salt-iron blood, earth underfoot, the distant percussion of cannon fire. He grasps for his bow, but his hands are empty, his back bare. Behind him, a man screams and Clint’s stomach heaves in sympathy. The air sticks to him, pooling sweat in the hollow of his throat, the bend of his elbow.

A sturdy woman whirls on him. She’s dressed in dark skirts, her hair neatly braided but her face and apron streaked with dirt and blood. She looks him up and down, frowns at his uniform, and says, “We don’t take well to loafers,” before handing him a stack of bandages and beckoning him inside a tent full of casualties. She’s brusque but not unkind, and it’s not like Clint hasn’t applied a field dressing before. His training floods over him:  _Blend in. Play along. Be what’s needed._

A doctor next to him points at a man missing a good part of his bicep and moves on. Without hesitation, Clint descends on the soldier, packing the wound, wrapping it. He’s good at this. He can follow orders, pin men as they writhe and beg. Inflict pain in the name of mercy. Next to him, around him, nurses and doctors work with the furious efficiency of the exhausted.

He catches glimpses of the woman who met him: cleaning a wound, reapplying a dressing, helping a man drink water, directing a pair of younger nurses to help her dress a man who has lost his uniform, taking notes in a large book, smoothing the hair back from a young soldier’s forehead. She moves with determined speed, and Clint finds himself watching for her, wondering at her, at least until a doctor calls him to help reset a joint. 

He loses track of time. Somehow it has become dark. Candles and lanterns cast long shadows on the tent walls. His hands are coated in blood, his tac suit spattered with it; he smells like things he’d rather not think about. As the sun descended, so did the sounds of battle, and now, in the haze of early evening, only the occasional rifle shot interrupts the cicadas.

He steps outside the tent and into a field of men, an August night clogged with suffering. The air still presses in from all sides, but has lost some of the oppressive heat of afternoon.

There is a rustle as the woman from earlier joins him. She’s changed into a clean apron, though she hasn’t washed her face. Her eyes are tired but her smile is real, and she carries a leather-bound ledger in one arm. “It’s faired up somewhat,” she says, looking wistfully at the last shreds of sunset. It takes him a moment to realize she’s talking about the weather.

“Yes ma’am,” he says.

“You are new to our hospital.”

“Yes ma’am.”

Her smile widens at that, and he sees a flicker of light in her eyes. She studies him, and seems to find what she’s looking for, because she nods once, sharply. “We have many duties here, among which is to keep ourselves in good order that we may better care for those who come to us wounded. You have worked commendably today.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

The woman opens her mouth to say more when another nurse, considerably less serene, appears from behind the canvas. “Nurse Barton,” she says, and Clint restrains his turn as his companion comes to attention.

“Yes, Margaret.”

“If I may, ma’am, Doctor’s calling you to look after one of the boys. The ball is through his stomach, and the soldier asks someone to take down a letter home.”

“I’ll be along in a moment,” says Nurse Barton as the other woman - a girl, really, Clint thinks, not much older than eighteen - ducks back into the tent.

“Barton,” says Clint. “Begging pardon, ma’am. Clara Barton?”

The woman nods. “Rarely a moment’s peace,” Clara says to herself before glancing at Clint. “Take rest where you can find it,” she says, then sighs, turning to go back inside. She pauses at the entry, outlined against the glow from within. “Eat.” She eyes his tac suit. “And do return in uniform.” The tent flap flutters closed behind her.

The sun is gone now, only the barest hint of blue at the horizon. Clint can pick out the silhouettes of trees on nearby hillsides, the mounds of pale fabric that indicate tents, the motion of men in camp. A song carries, rough voices raised in chorus. In the distance, beyond the row of cannon, the nearly invisible glow of enemy firelight. Cicadas whir together, joined by the banjo-pluck notes of tree frogs and a low bullfrog at intervals beneath. He breathes in the scents of blood, of excrement, of lead and crushed grass, of wet earth and sodden wool.

He blinks and it’s gone.

He blinks again and opens his eyes to glaring light, the glint of sun off a reflective faceplate. Gravel grinds into his shoulder blades and his elbows feel stripped raw.  _Oh good, dragged along a street then._  He squints, his vision adjusting.

“Glad you could rejoin the party,” Tony says from behind the mask, and Clint sees Nat over a red-and-gold shoulder, her face deceptively still. “Wasn’t sure that was going to work,” Tony mutters to himself. He and Clint are definitely going to have a conversation about what  _that_ means later.

“What happened?” Clint asks. His mouth tastes like tin.

“You left for a minute,” says Steve from somewhere behind him. Clint tilts his head back until he sees a red boot.

“You left,” says Nat. She is breathing so slowly he knows it’s a front. “Your body was there, alive, but you weren’t in it.”

“I’m sorry,” he says to all of them. He looks her in the eye and says  _I’m so sorry,_ this time without words.

“You’re back,” she says with her voice, and with her eyebrows:  _Don’t do that again; please don’t do that again. Also, I might kill you if you do that again._

 _I won’t,_ he says, and is rewarded by a minute softening of the lines around her mouth.

“Hey,” he says to the rest of them, “so I think I might have a second career in nursing?” He closes his eyes then, to the “Anything after this is a hobby, let’s just be real now—“ “Wait,  _what?_ ” “Where were you?” and remembers a soft, weary  _Take rest where you can find it._ The middle of the street’s as good a place as any, he figures, and when he feels Natasha’s hand on his shoulder, squeezing to reassure them both they’ve lived, he smiles, and just for a moment, rests.


End file.
